VPNArea Review

VPNArea is owned by Offshore Security LTD, a firm that is registered in Bulgaria but whose servers and emails are hosted in Switzerland. The VPN is a zero-logs service that provides access to servers throughout the world. It is a cheap VPN that has an extremely good reputation with its subscribers. In this VPNArea review, we take a look at why they are so well liked by their customers.

Price

Consumers can purchase VPNArea via three different subscription plans. The cost is reduced the longer the subscriber commits for. A single-month offering costs $9.90 per month, which is pricey but normal for a one month VPN plan. The cost reduces to $4.92 for an annual plan. However, subscribing for 3 years lowers the cost to just $2.99 per month, which is a hard price to beat considering what you get for your money.

Although VPNArea doesn’t provide a free trial, it does have thirty-day money-back guarantee (14 days on the 1-month account). That means you can test the service for a whole week and get a refund if you aren’t quite happy.

VPNArea provides plenty of different payment options. Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, UnionPay, JCB, and Maestro, are all accepted. And, users can elect to pay with Bitcoin or via e-wallets like PayPal, Payza, and Webmoney.

Supported Payment Platforms

Visa/MasterCard

Cryptocurrency

Unblock Netflix?

VPNArea

ExpressVPN

CyberGhost VPN

Netflix

iPlayer

Amazon Prime

Hulu

Disney+

When it comes to unblocking content VPNArea is superb. This service is a fanstatic VPN for Netflix as it can unblock the Netflix content from around the world. VPNArea lets you watch BBC iPlayer outside of the UK. In fact, it is one of the few VPNs that unblocks rarer services like RTE Ireland, Italian SkyGo and Italian Netflix. What we like about VPNArea is that it listens to its subscribers and will go out of its way to ensure services are unblocked if they are requested.

Features

Torrenting

Simultaneous connections

6

Router Support

Port selection

Port forwarding

Bare metal or virtual servers

A combination

Routers Supported

ASUS GLi DD-WRT

Total servers

200

Server Locations

70

VPNArea has a full suite of privacy and security features that provide everything subscribers are likely to need including:

No logs policy

Servers in 70 countries worldwide

OpenVPN encryption and IKEv2 VPN protocol

Outstanding customer service

Excellent security features (DNS leak protection)

Killswitch (Windows, Mac OSX, Android)

P2P permitted

Live chat is 24/7

6 simultaneous connections

Auto-connect

Auto IP change

Stunnel obfuscated connections for bypassing firewalls and concealing VPN use

Dedicated IP addresses with private server add-on

Unblocks Netflix US and BBC iPlayer

We particularly enjoyed VPNArea’s generous six simultaneous connections allowance - which means that subscribers can protect all their devices with just one subscription. This makes VPNArea perfect for family homes where there are a number of mobiles, desktops, and tablets to protect.

What’s more, this is one of the few VPNs that provide dedicated IPs. Subscribers can pay as little as $15 a year to add on a dedicated IP with a private server to their existing subscription. Subscribers can get a dedicated IP in a number of hotspots including the UK, the US, the Netherlands, and Australia. This is great for people that play poker and other specialized groups (anyone who wants to run mail or gaming servers, for example).

Speed and Performance

We test VPNArea three times a day using our scientific server-based speed test system. We test servers located in the UK, the US, Hong Kong, and Australia for average and top (burst) connection speeds.

We found VPNArea download speed results to be well above average. With downloads averaging at just below 30 Mbps - it is easy to see why this VPN is great for streaming Netflix or other restricted HD streams.

Burst speeds of 70 Mbps aren’t necessarily blinding - but they do prove that this VPN has plenty of power and will always get the job done when it comes to more data-intensive tasks.

IP Leaks

IPv4 leak detected?

WebRTC leak detected?

Data limits

Bandwidth limits

IPv6 leak detected?

ProPrivacy.com SpeedTest (average)

40.59

We tested VPNArea for leaks on IPv4 and IPv6 by using the excellent leak test tool ipleak.org. We are happy to report that VPNArea suffered no IP leaks, DNS leaks, or WebRTC leaks on either type of connection. This is extremely impressive because a lot of premium VPNs suffer some leaks on IPv6: VPNArea did not.

You can use ipleak.net to check for IP leaks, DNS leaks, and WebRTC leaks for yourself. Remember to always use a private browsing window in your browser to avoid cache problems!

When you connect to VPNArea, DNS requests are handled by third-party DNS resolvers run by Cloudflare. However, VPNArea always proxies those requests first - meaning that this VPN is completely secure in terms of privacy.

Perhaps the only downside of using Cloudflare DNS resolvers is that it does push up DNS lookup times a little, which means that page load times will increase slightly while VPNArea is connected.

Privacy

Obfuscation (stealth)

IPv6 leak protection

WebRTC leak protection

Kill Switch

Self-hosted/Proxied DNS

Yes

VPNArea is great for privacy purposes because of its base in Bulgaria and Swiss central servers. This keeps its subscribers' data well out of reach of invasive jurisdictions such as the UK and the US. Add to this, the fact that it is a zero-logs VPN. This means that it keeps no data on their customers so they have nothing to pass to the authorities if requested.

What’s more, VPNArea has a killswitch on Mac OS X, Windows, and Android meaning that this VPN is perfect for people who want to download torrents safely. In addition, VPNArea uses bare-metal servers that it has full control over - even when it provides virtual locations.

All in all, we have no doubts that VPNArea is extremely good for privacy purposes and being able to pay with Bitcoins and without giving a name creates the possibility for relative anonymity.

Encryption

IKEv2

OpenVPN

PPTP

L2TP/IPsec

SSTP

Other protocols

Double OpenVPN

VPNArea is a VPN that prides itself on providing strong up to date encryption implementation. It provides access to OpenVPN and IKEv2 protocols; both which are considered military grade encryption.

Where OpenVPN is concerned, We awarded VPNArea was awarded five out of five for its implementation of the protocol VPN awards in Las Vegas.

Here is how VPNArea implements OpenVPN on the control channel:

256-bit AES CBC cipher

HMAC SHA 256 authentication

RSA 4096 handshake

Perfect Forward Secrecy with RSA + DH-4096

The data channel is protected with similarly high standards…

AES-256-CBC cipher

HMAC SHA 256 authentication

This is extremely robust OpenVPN implementation, which means that the VPN can be trusted to provide strong security.

What’s more, VPNArea even has a bug bounty on its website inviting white hat hackers to earn money for finding vulnerabilities in its clients. This is excellent and shows that the firm is open about wanting to ensure security on its platform.

Customer Service

Money-back Guarantee

24-hour support

Live chat

Money-back guarantee length

7

Free trial

No

When it comes to customer services there are few VPNs that we have ever tested that are in the same league as VPNArea. Subscribers and non-subscribers alike have access to 24/7 live chat support, and their agents are friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful.

In addition, subscribers get access to a ticket system for asking questions via email, a useful FAQ section, and setup guides for all Operating Systems and for DD-WRT and Tomato routers.

I tested their live chat thoroughly and found it to be faultless. When I had an extremely techy question regarding encryption implementation I was told I would receive the answer via the email ticket system. The answer was courteous and gave a direct answer to my question, with some additional information regarding both the dedicated IP addresses and their service’s security features.

Finally, VPNArea also has well managed social media accounts on both Twitter (@vpnareacom) and Facebook (VPN Area – Offshore Security EOOD). Consumers can also ask questions on those platforms.

User Experience

Windows

Android

iOS

Windows Phone

macOS

Linux

The VPNArea website is a well laid out and useful addition to the service. Plenty of information is available in the FAQ section and once subscribers log in to the member's area they get access to useful setup guides and resources.

Signing up to VPNArea is extremely easy, and users do not need to hand over any invasive data such as names. An email address is needed for correspondence, however, you can elect to join using a burner email for added security if you wish.

The Windows app

As with all of VPNArea’s apps, the Windows VPN client is simply laid out and easy to use. The settings menu is easy to navigate and users can quickly alter any settings that they wish to enable the killswitch or obfuscation, for example.

Speeds on the Windows client are superb, and we were able to stream for hours without interruptions. We never experienced any crashes or other interruptions.

A killswitch is available to stop the VPN leaking data if the connection drops out, which means that this VPN is perfect for torrenting with privacy. DNS leak protection is also available in the client, which is great.

The Auto-IP Changer allows users to set a length of time before the IP is changed. Finally, users can set the VPN to run as soon as Windows starts, auto-connect to the last server they used, check for updates, and also to enable IPv6 leak protection.

Other platforms

VPNArea offers an excellent apps Mac OSX, iOS, Android, and a Linux VPN GUI on several distros. All of the clients provide a full suite of features. It is worth noting that their iOS VPN implements IKEv2 encryption by default and does not have a killswitch. However, OpenVPN can be used by connecting via the OpenVPN connect app.

Other than this, all the platforms are extremely similar and all provide equal efficiency in terms of speed and stability. Routers such as DD-WRT, Merlin Firmware, and Tomato are also compatible, and setup guides for configuring each platform can be found in VPNArea’s members-only area. We tested the iOS and Android VPN apps with an IPv4 connection and found them to be easy to use; neither suffered IP leaks. We also checked the Mac VPN client on both IPv4 and IPv6, again no leaks were discovered, which is excellent.

Final thoughts

VPNArea is a highly secure VPN provider based in Bulgaria and hosted in Switzerland. It is a well-rounded service with excellent apps for all platforms. For the cost of a subscription, the no-logs policy, 256-bit AES encryption, DNS leak detection, killswitch – and other additional features are truly outstanding.

Customer service could not be better with this provider, and it is always eager to help consumers to unblock content. What’s more, this is one of the few services that still unblocks iPlayer and Netflix US in 2020.

The availability of dedicated IP addresses with a private server is excellent and will be a selling point for some people. To conclude, this VPN is a great all-rounder that is definitely worth testing thanks to its 30-day money back guarantee. If you like the service, a three-year subscription is well worth the money.

86 Comments

John Crighton

VPN area was a one of the best out there, but with one major flaw. They are one of the few companies that do not use their own dns servers. They previously used cloudflare which does keep logs for a short period of time but now they have switched to GOOGLE resolvers. This can be verified on a site like dnsleaktest.com. Does anybody trust the worlds biggest data collection company with all their search requests. In addition their "custom dns servers" in their client interface does not work. Contacting their support department yielded no help as they try to blame the problem on you.

Douglas Crawford
replied to John Crighton

Hi John. I have discussed this very issue with the CEO of VPNArea. He assured me that although VPNArea does use public DNS services, all DNS queries are proxied through VPNA'rea's servers. This is quite a common practice for smaller VPN services, and means that while Google (or whoever) does resolve the DNS queries, it does not know who made them as all requests appear to come from the VPN server. In our view the privacy risk posed by this setup is negligible.

Bet Ab

Works from China, few months now they help me stay in touch with internet as I knew it. Also works in my job where company firewall tries to suck the joy out of internet as well. US/Can speeds are near original speed for me. US Netflix works too.

eLMurph

I chose VPNArea based on other more recent reviews of the service, can't remember which one so I'm leaving my feedback here. The apps they have now are newer versions (or at least look newer) than in this review and are super nice and easy going. I've maxed out my 150mbps connection with vpnarea, so I think speeds are top notch. I bought dedicated IP and live chat was immediately available when i had a question. English netflix works, so that sums up my need for VPN and so far I can say it's 50 dollars well spent.

Rebsat

@Dimitry from VPNArea Hi Dimitry. I have two questions please… 1. Would you please tell Android fans when are you gonna release a new Android app just like the iOS one which has been released 3 days ago? 2. Are you gonna implement two different kill switches in the next Android app just like VPNArea’s app for Windows? Thanks for your good answers.